You’ll remember I reviewed and adored Raindrops On The Umbrella Cafe by the wonderful Jodie Homer, and was blown away a little by the whole prettiness of it all, and a fantastic feel good element. Well I decided for chick lit may to remind them of this fact (see review here ) and send people to reach for this for their Summer read and also to ask Jodie for a guest post for chick lit May. So without much ado … here we go (and thank you to the lovely Ms. Homer for this fab insight) !
What they say:
The man of your dreams is one umbrella away.
On inheriting her uncle’s beloved Umbrella Café, Sarah packs up and leaves the busy city of Birmingham for her childhood seaside village of Cobble-Heath.
Discovering life at the Umbrella Café is not as idyllic as it was when she was a child. Sarah has to contend with getting to grips with managing a café, accepting her two childhood best friends falling in love and a handsome Australian stranger who has come for the summer. Throw in a family secret with an unexpected arrival and Sarah’s life is turned upside down.
Can Sarah keep the cracks in her life sealed up or will she be the next thing to crack up?
What Jodie says! :
So the idea for Raindrops on the Umbrella Cafe actually came from watching one of my favourite musicals, Singin in the Rain. I absolutely love the film and the idea of umbrellas came before anything else and then I developed that into a cafe where anyone can find a blind date by picking an umbrella out of the stack. I love the idea of finding your true love with an umbrella. The rest of the story came after that with the setting being a seaside village. Cobble-Heath is entirely fictional and not at all based on anywhere. Then the characters Christy and Arthur, the mum dad and brother and Tyler was actually one of the last characters and at first he was American but then I changed it to Australian. I knew exactly how I wanted Tyler to look even more than Sarah. I based him on what I would want someone to look like not necessarily being Australian but the dark hair and eye colour.
Aunt Maggie is based a little on my Nan and when I used to visit her when I was younger but I’ve obviously changed some of her mannerisms. The nostalgia in the book is based on my own love of 90s and early 00s music. The playlist is full of my favourite songs that I’ve managed to weave my way into the book through a lot of karaoke scenes and no, I don’t do karaoke at all. I used to when I was younger and my karaoke song was Hopelessly Devoted to you.
I feel like my characters especially Christy are like me. I say things how they are and don’t have much of a filter and I feel like I create characters like that who reflect on me. I don’t give them my anxiety because I secretly wish I could be more like them.
I hope you liked the insight into Raindrops on the Umbrella Cafe.
X Jodie
Jodie’s bio
Jodie lives in a small village in Solihull with her husband and two children. She loves nothing more than dancing around embarrassingly to 90s music and eating mint chocolate. Jodie enjoys reading and writing books full of romance and swoon-worthy fictional men.
Twitter https://twitter.com/umbrellacafe
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/jodietheauthor/
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jodie_loves_books/
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